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Do you have a place that is special to you? I do, it’s a little park in Houston, Texas. It is two enormous fields where you can play baseball, football, or just run around! I like to bring my birds there (I have three birds). If it rains real hard there, it makes a huge pond near a big tree. There are millions of tadpoles in the pond! You can take a jar or an empty water bottle and swoop it through the brown, dirty, muddy water, and you get a lot of tadpoles. Then you keep them until they turn into frogs! I live very close to the park, and I like to ride my bike up there when there’s a nice breeze. There are four swings, and I put my two little birds on my shoulders and swing up and down and they seem to enjoy it.

There are people who drive by there. 70% who drive by are under 18 so they go 60 and the limit is 40 and they skid. (It’s so annoying!) I’m mostly the only one there so it’s pretty quiet (besides the cars) so I like to bring my books up there and read. I also have three dogs, and I can let them off the leash, and they run carefree, and no limits to them it seems. There is a boat in the park that you can climb on top of, and it has smokestacks on the top. Then I like to bang on the smokestacks. It sounds like a drum.

Once some high school kids built a tree house in the park. They hung signs on one of the trees in the enormous park. Some said, “Go away!” and “Don’t come in!” and “Back away!” “Danger!” They just left it there about two long months after they built it. They left it there like if you don’t clean your room for a month, and now there is only one sign hanging and when the wind blows it makes a squeaky sound. It seems every time it squeaks it’s about to fall off.

I sometimes climb up in there and let my birds crawl on the crisscross branches. I just have to watch them to make sure they don’t go too high. As I climb down, the sun starts to set and glisten on the pond. Then I know it’s time to go home.